After the surprise release of the Rick and Morty Season 4 Part 2 trailer on April 1, Adult Swim revealed the titles of the remaining Season 4 episodes. The new titles and summaries are just as nonsensical as Rick and Morty fans have come to expect, but a closer look could reveal a few key details about the plot and structure of Season 4 Part 2.
The titles were announced by a handful of Twitter accounts, including one Adult Swim-adjacent personality, a fan account, a celebrity, a random fan, and IGN. It’s a chaotic departure from the video Adult Swim released in October 2019 announcing the titles of this season’s first five episodes in a way that poked fun at Stranger Things. Yet here we are, when it’s rolled out via a series of random tweets on Monday before a confirmation video released a Tuesday.
The five tweets vary greatly in terms of what they reveal exactly. The first tweet from IGN confirms that “Never Ricking Morty” will be Episode 6, the mid-season premiere, but it offers no logline. (Historically, loglines are vague at best, broh, but do offer hints about each episode in conjunction with the punny titles.) Because this tweet was published first, you’d think that these tweets present the titles and loglines in the same order that they’ll air. That’s not the case, however.
The fifth tweet came from Riverdale actress Camila Mendes — who has been a vocal fan of Rick and Morty for years, even dressing as “Sexy Rick” for Halloween 2019 — and she specifically mentions that “The Vat of Acid Episode” is “#408,” which will be the third episode in this batch. In other words, the final order of episodes is different from the order of these tweets.
Thankfully, the official Rick and Morty Twitter account published a complete list of titles and air dates for the episodes on Tuesday.
- “Never Ricking Morty” (May 3)
- “Promortyus” — Get off my face broh. (May 10)
- “The Vat of Acid Episode” — The one with the acid vat, broh. (May 17)
- “Childrick of Mort” — Miracle of life broh. Whole family in this one broh. (May 24)
- “Star Mort Rickturn of the Jerri” — Parenting is crazy broh. Stuff straight disappearin’ in this one. (May 31)
The final four episodes do include loglines that connect to some scenes from “The Other Five” trailer, but such connections are tenuous at best, especially when the individual episode titles parody major sci-fi stories without involving similar plots at all. Nonetheless, here’s a closer look at how these remaining episodes could play out this season.
Rick and Morty Season 4 Episode, “Never Ricking Morty”
Almost nothing has been revealed about the mid-season premiere, but the title seems to reference The NeverEnding Story, a 1984 fantasy film in which a young boy is swept up in a magical tale of a fantastical world in danger. Rick and Morty could interpret this in any number of ways.
Stranger Things Season 3 famously had a musical number from The NeverEnding Story, so is this yet another troll?
Rick and Morty Season 4 Episode 7, “Promortyus”
A clear riff on the movie Prometheus, which takes place in the same cinematic universe as the Alien movies, the main bit here is a kind of Facehugger alien that Rick tells Morty to put on his face.
The scenes are presented in a confusing order in the trailer, but this is seemingly the same episode where Morty mans a turret underneath Rick’s ship and they confront Summer (who’s become queen of these alien people) while wearing cool Gundamn mecha suits.
Rick and Morty Season 4 Episode 8, “The Vat of Acid Episode”
The Part 2 trailer makes a huge point out of a weird joke about how Morty should follow Rick if he leaps into a vat of acid. This actually happens late in the trailer, but there’s very little context beyond that.
However, the eighth episode in every prior season has been an “anthological” story. Seasons 1 and 2 featured Interdimensional Cable (television shows and commercials from across the multiverse), and Season 3 replaced it with “Morty’s Mind Blowers.” Way back in February 2019, co-creator Justin Roiland hinted that Interdimensional Cable 3 was in development for Season 4, but he also wrote “maybe” in the tease, so it’s possible that this “Vat of Acid” episode is a similar but different anthological episode. The vat itself might just be the opening scene, and it could lead to all sorts of places — maybe even the assumed Game of Thrones world with giant direwolves.
Rick and Morty Season 4 Episode 9, “Childrick of Mort”
Alfonso Cuarón’s excellent Children of Men is what “Childrick of Mort” is going for here, but it’s unlikely the episode will grapple with a dystopian society where mass infertility feels like a slow and creeping extinction event. This penultimate episode of Season 4 involves the “whole family” which could mean any number of things.
An army of Morty Jrs (Morty’s half Gazorpian offspring from Season 1) could be the angle here, which could potentially mean the final two episodes of Season 4 are a two-part story that involves the conflict between Evil Morty and Rick.
Rick and Morty Season 4 Episode 10, “Star Mort Rickturn of the Jerri”
The big season finale is an obvious riff on Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, which feels like confirmation that a big final battle will happen. In one shot from the trailer, Summer fights Tammy, and they’re both wielding lightsabers. In another shot, the family’s former dog Snuffles fights a cat in a similar robotic armature. The skies overhead in both shots make it seem like it’s the same battle.
These final two episodes will draw Rick and Morty into conflict with the Galactic Federation and Citadel yet again, and we’ll see many familiar faces from throughout the years return. In short, it should be the most epic season finale in the show’s history, even more so than Season 2’s “The Wedding Squanchers.”
Rick and Morty Season 4 Part 2 premieres May 3 on Adult Swim.
